I mirror your concerns about the index--fortuantly, the index in the Camel is very good.

One of the reasons O'Reilly books can't charme is are the poor indices, with no exception of the Camel. Granted, the index of Camel III is better than the Camel II, but it's still poor. (Early prints didn't even have an entry for 'regular expression', IIRC). You mention Knuth. Take the index of The Art of Computer Programming, and compare that with the index of the Camel.

What I also don't understand is that you wouldn't buy certain classes of books, because they are easily outdated, yet you break a lance for the Camel. The Camel was released shortly after 5.6.0, and large chunks were written before 5.6.0 was finalized. We know have 5.8.0 with 5.8.1 around the corner. I'd say the Camel III is suffers from being outdated as well.

Abigail